Hunger // Current TV

Mexico and Central America face catastrophic drought

Mexico and Central America look like they are covered in dried blood on maps... more

JanforGore
added this
6 days ago
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12 comments

TIME TO TAKE CHARGE

I think it is high time we all stand up and tell the bunch of jokers we call Congress... more

ebdotkom
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15 days ago
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0 comments

Tell G8 leaders not to forget the fight against hunger and poverty

Millions of people are locked in a vicious cycle of hunger and poverty. Poverty means... more

JanforGore
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16 days ago
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15 comments

All Heart: House GOP Votes to Cut Meals On Wheels in Favor of Pentagon Spending

The Republican-controlled House Budget Committee on Monday voted to cut key programs,... more

StewSteve
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21 days ago
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0 comments

FUEL - America is addicted to oil...

FUEL is the successor to "Fields of Fuel" which won the 2008 Sundance Film... more

3oc
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3 years ago
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3 comments

Let them eat rice and beans: is Sean Hannity really a vegan?

Is it possible the Sean Hannity is a closet vegan?

WizardOfOsrin
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29 days ago
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0 comments

Longing for the Bad Ol’ Days?

A sarcastic and informative commentary on 'Regressive Politics'...... more

StewSteve
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1 month ago
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0 comments

In times of drought, Mexico's Tarahumara turn to tradition

For the more than sixty thousand Tarahumara Indians living in the high Sierra’s... more

JanforGore
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1 month ago
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0 comments

Raising Resistance: The GM soya war in South America

Beautifully shot and interweaving interviews with scenes from soy fields in Paraguay,... more

JanforGore
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1 month ago
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3 comments

Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast Day 26

Could you send your child to bed hungry and do nothing?

Jacqueline_Schriewer_Rizk
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2 months ago
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Proposal for a 'Great Ideas That Work' contest

Our news media are so focused on the issues and the rhetoric spewed over them, that their lenses are NOT shining a light on the very thing that millions are craving; solutions.

During my 4+ years of no regular paychecks and recreating/educating myself based on my skills and passions, I traveled, (whenever I had gas money!), giving hunger and related issues a voice through videos, photos, blogs and lots of comments in social media forums.

I quickly learned that there are really innovative solutions popping up in communities all over; many formed through coalitions of organizations, businesses, schools, etc., that other communities could learn from, if a light/lens was shown upon all these 'Great Ideas That Work', (GITW). I also realized that I on my own, wasn't going to have the reach to help those communities and millions of people.

Then, I had my own GITW! What if there were a contest, where people from all over could submit their essays, photos and videos, folk could vote for the winning entries, exposure in media/social media would be great and we could publish a book and a feature length documentary out of the entries? So... I made a video proposal to The Ellen DeGeneres Show, figuring she likes positivity, hope, cool things and she has a far reach. https://bitly.com/wWSjR8

I have yet to hear from Ellen's staff and this week, the toll of so long without a regular income, will claim my home. I want to get this idea viral and for some major entity to MOVE on helping the millions of hopeless, using ideas that already exist. (I'd also like them to give me a job but my higher purpose has always been to help others.)

GE, parent company of MSNBC/NBC/CNBC tout their work in innovation and between the 3 aforementioned networks, have millions of devoted viewers that could go out in their communities, (if they don't already know what GITW in their regions!), and seek/document/submit, so that we could start repairing the severe fracture in America's foundation; the diminishing middle class which is swelling the ranks of the impoverished.

I'll be spending the day making a video proposal to GE and several other entities I feel could step up and pull this project off, but hope that y'all can help me send my video proposal to Ellen, viral. I need a miracle and so do millions of others. Wouldn't it feel great knowing you helped change a life and/or millions, with a small action?

Please start pushing our national and local news media, to start reporting on solutions. A small spark can unleash a wildfire.Our news media are so focused on the issues and the rhetoric spewed over them, that... more

KimDoyleWille
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3 months ago
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0 comments

Dr. James Hansen's Must See TED Talk: Starting To Reduce CO2 In 10 Years Is Too Late

“It would be immoral to leave these young people with a climate system spiraling out of control.”
by Dan Miller

NASA climate scientist James Hansen gave a talk at the TED conference in Long Beach, CA on February 29th where he laid out the case for taking urgent action to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Dr. Hansen’s talk began by describing his personal journey, originally studying Venus under Prof. James Van Allen and then working at NASA on an instrument to study Venus’ atmosphere. But after being asked to do some calculations of Earth’s greenhouse effect, Dr. Hansen resigned from the Venus mission to work full time studying Earth’s atmosphere “because a planet changing before our eyes is more interesting and important – its changes will affect all humanity.”

Dr. Hansen and some colleagues published a 1981 paper in Science Magazine that concluded that “observed warming of 0.4C in the prior century was consistent with the greenhouse effect of increasing CO2, — that Earth would likely warm in the 1980s, — and warming would exceed the noise level of random weather by the end of the century. We also said that the 21st century would see shifting climate zones, creation of drought prone regions in North America and Asia, erosion of ice sheets, rising sea levels, and opening of the fabled Northwest passage. All of these impacts have since either happened or are now well underway.”

Dr. Hansen went on to explain that, after speaking out for the need for an energy policy that would address climate change, the White House contacted NASA and Dr. Hansen was ordered to not speak to the media without permission. After informing the New York Times about the situation, the censorship was lifted and Dr. Hansen continued to speak out, justifying his actions with the first line of NASA’s Mission Statement’: “To understand and protect the home planet”. But there were consequences… the reference to the home planet was soon struck from NASA’s Mission Statement, never to return.

Dr. Hansen then went on to describe some of the recent science, including a detailed look at the Earth’s energy imbalance that was made possible by data from 3000 “Argo” floats that measure ocean temperature at different depths. Dr. Hansen said that the current imbalance of 0.6 watts/square meter (which does not include the energy already used to cause the current warming of 0.8°C) was equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs every day, 365 days per year.

Favorite denier myths such as “it’s the Sun” and “CO2 lags temperature” were addressed by Dr. Hansen and shown to be wrong or irrelevant. He also discussed how amplifying feedbacks in the past took small changes in temperature due to slight changes in the Earth’s orbit and either initiated or ended ice ages. He then said these same amplifying feedbacks will occur today if we do not stop the warming. ”The physics does not change.”

Besides the impacts that are already occurring, Dr. Hansen said that if we do not stop the warming, we should expect sea levels to rise this century by 1 to 5 meters (3 to 18 feet), extinction of 20 to 50% of species, and massive droughts later this century. He said that the recent Texas heat wave, Moscow’s heat wave the year before, and the 2003 heat wave in Europe we “exceptional” events that now occur 25 to 50 times more often than just 50 years ago. Therefore, he concluded, we can say with high confidence that these heat waves were “caused” by global warming.

More at the link“It would be immoral to leave these young people with a climate system spiraling... more

JanforGore
added this
3 months ago
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6 comments

Cooking Healthy Family Meals on a Limited Budget?

Low-income American are cooking dinner most nights but are struggling to make healthy... more

YourUpdateTV
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3 months ago
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0 comments

The flip side: what Bill Gates doesn't know about GMOs

If you assume that Bill Gates is so well informed about all his philanthropic targets that you take his word at face value, you would be in good company, but you might be terribly wrong. Organizations well versed in the agricultural issues facing developing nations are saying his annual letter, released last week, is completely mistaken when it asserts that a lack of support for GMO crop development is responsible, in part, for allowing world hunger to endure. We interviewed Heather Pilatic, Ph.D., co-director of the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), to show us the other, important side of the story.

TakePart: In the introduction to his letter, Bill Gates cites the Green Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, saying scientists created new seed varieties for rice, wheat, and maize, and that this resulted in increased crop yield and a decrease in extreme poverty around the world. Do you agree that this is a model to use moving forward?

Heather Pilatic: The Green Revolution is a story that some people like to tell, but it has little basis in historical fact. Take the Green Revolution’s origins in 1940s Mexico, for instance. It was not really about feeding the world; Mexico was a food exporter at the time. Rather, the aims included stabilizing restive rural populations in our neighbor to the south, and making friends with a government that at the time was selling supplies to the World War II Axis powers and confiscating oil fields held by Standard Oil (a funding source for the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the key architects of the Green Revolution).

We can also learn from India, the Green Revolution’s next stop after Mexico. India embraced the Green Revolution model of chemical-intensive agriculture. Now it is the world’s second biggest rice grower with surplus grain in government warehouses. Yet India has more starving people than sub-Saharan Africa—at more than 200 million, that’s nearly a quarter of its population. History shows that a narrow focus on increasing crop yield through chemical-seed packages reduces neither hunger nor poverty.

So no, we do not agree that the Green Revolution offers a promising model for addressing poverty.

TakePart: Bill Gates is urging that more money be donated to agricultural innovation, including crop GMOs, because "one in seven people will continue living needlessly on the edge of starvation." Of course, this argument worries all of us. Will you explain PANNA's perspective?

Heather Pilatic: We could not agree with Gates more on the first point. Investment in agriculture in the developing world is enormously efficient and more impactful on the ground than investment in just about any other sector. It is also true that more people than ever before are going hungry, needlessly. We have enough food to go around now. We disagree with Gates on two points—one scientific and one political.

First, the science. Most of the rest of the world's experts agree that GMOs are not what the world's poor need to feed themselves. The science simply doesn't bear this claim out. Our staff scientist was a lead author in the most comprehensive analysis of global agriculture ever undertaken, the UN & World Bank's International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (the IAASTD). After four years and with the input of over 400 experts, and reams of evidence, the IAASTD concluded that the developing world's best bet for feeding itself in the 21st century was explicitly not the kind of chemically intensive farming that accompanies GMO seeds. Rather, these experts found that smaller scale, farmer-driven, knowledge-intensive, ecological agriculture is one of the most promising ways forward for the developing world in particular. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has reported that ecological farming can double food production within 10 years. This is the kind of agriculture we should be investing in.

Second, the political—and this cuts two ways. We must finally recognize that hunger is a problem of poverty and access to resources, especially land, not agricultural yield. The solution to world hunger is a political one: stop kicking farmers off their land and dumping product on the world market that puts them out of business; protect farmers’ rights to save and exchange seed; kick the bankers out of food-crop commodities speculation, they're playing roulette with our food system; write fair trade policies; listen to the world's poor, they know what they need...in short, democratize food and farming if you want to address hunger.

Finally, here in the U.S., kick the farm lobby out of Congress and the pesticide industry out of our federal regulatory agencies (EPA & USDA). Together, these two special interests have a chokehold on U.S. farm, aid and trade policy, and dominate our agricultural research agenda in ways that make it possible for a smart man like Bill Gates to believe and prosyletize on behalf of an approach to agriculture that A, the rest of the world knows is defunct; and B, has failed—after 14 years of commercialization and billions of dollars in public research funding—to deliver on a single one of its promises to the public.

More at the linkIf you assume that Bill Gates is so well informed about all his philanthropic targets... more